


in solitude we gather

by catpoop



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst with a Happy Ending, Background Relationships, Forced Isolation, Introspection, M/M, Mild Gore, Minor Character Death, References to Depression, Shiro POV
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-23
Updated: 2018-01-23
Packaged: 2019-03-08 12:37:57
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 11,211
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13458423
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/catpoop/pseuds/catpoop
Summary: When the Galaxy Garrison realises that Takashi Shirogane has crash-landed to Earth years after he was declared dead, they'll do anything to make sure he never sees the light of day.alternatively: what if keith wasn't quick enough in his rescue?





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> hoo boy this was inspired by several shiro week prompts but Alas that week has come and gone and now we're... approximately 2 months too late  
> thank you very much to everyone who has helped me develop my ideas + fic, especially to my betas Jae, Mila, and mswriterperson on tumblr
> 
> pls enjoy :')

Shiro’s fist arcs out and hits the mirror in slow motion. He watches as tension splinters in his knuckles, hears the visceral thud of flesh on glass, and grunts as pain lances jagged up his arm. Frustration throbs in his nerves as he slowly raises his head and stares at the scene before him. 

Instead of razor edges and glittering fragments, the laminated glass stares dully back at him, hanging intact in a sharp spider-web. Shiro frowns, a hiss slipping off his tongue.

He can still see his own reflection and the tiny bathroom behind him, all comforting blue tile and plain bottles lining the shower cubicle. His surroundings soon fade into unimportance as his vision tunnels, once more focused on the grotesque caricatures reflected before him.

Shiro swings again. Again, again, again, until his anger and terror combined tears a horrific scream from his throat.

“Fuck! _FUCK!_ ”

He screams to cover up the sound of flesh and bone hitting unflinchingly cold glass and the silence of the unforgiving prison he’s found himself in. He screams because there’s no one else to hear him.

And at last, when his screams die down and nausea stirs a cauldron in his belly, Shiro stumbles backwards, tripping over his own feet to fall heavily. Tattered skin hangs bloody off his fist, and above him, the mirror looms all powdered dust and diamonds. A tired exhale falls from his lips.

He’s… done it, Shiro supposes. Adrenaline seeps from his skin, and he slumps, silent.

 

In another time, in front of another mirror, Shiro screams again. 

Panic jolts through his veins as he sways on the spot, dizzy from stumbling upright. Shielding his eyes against the light, Shiro squints at his surroundings. A bed and mattress stand alone in the tiled room, and the pale blue of the sheets sends a panic through him. He hasn’t seen a colour like that in a long time; hasn’t seen much of anything that wasn’t shades of purple, black, _blood_.

Shiro’s fingers dig into his side and he startles to hear a crinkling, of a papery material that he is currently clad in. It terrifies him, but also –

There’s the chance this room may not be Galran at all, and instead something _man-made._ Shiro takes another look around its interior, eyes frantically scanning every surface for any clues as to his whereabouts.

Aside from the bed, the room is bare, framed by blank walls. A large screen of glass splits the fourth wall and Shiro frowns, taking a closer look.

Even in his disoriented state, he quickly identifies the one-way mirror looming in front of him. The glass highlights every scarred detail on his face, one he recognises just enough to stop from attacking. Exhaustion lines his face and defeat sits heavy in his bones.

If it weren’t for the obvious change in scenery, he would lie back down in a second. A fear of the unknown keeps Shiro on his toes and he darts another look behind him, just in case.

Slowly, he reaches for the mirror, placing a solid fist on its surface and using his human hand to thumb curiously at the reflective plane. If he’s guessed correctly, then behind the entirety of the wall is any number of Garrison operatives, watching and waiting for his next moves. 

Like he’s the fish in a fishtank, on display for all to see. He’s felt like this many a time in the past months, but now, unnatural silence presses uncomfortably on his ears. Shiro holds his breath.

Nothing.

The longer he stares, the larger the mirror looms before him, contorting with Shiro’s own anger until he powers up his arm and screams.

“Director! No – anyone, listen to me! Listen to _me_ , I swear, I swear there’s aliens out there and they’re coming for Earth right now!” A sharp clang of metal on glass punctuates his statement, and Shiro lunges forward again and again, a rhythm quickly building his arm.

“Let me talk to someone, anyone! This is the Garrison, right? I’m – This is Takashi Shirogane, Command Pilot for the Kerberos mission.” 

He pauses to take a breath, stares at the network of cracks in front of him. “Is anyone there? Let me out please – let me, I need to talk to someone!”

He can almost see the Garrison officers in their tailored uniforms observing him. In his mind he watches them turn away to remotely administer jabs, shocks, poisons but that’s… 

That’s something the Galra would do, would imprison him in a tiny cell with no explanation. But this is the, is the –

– Garrison?

Shiro stumbles backwards from the hole he’s shredded into the mirror, just in time to see a small, pointed projectile emerge from the darkness behind it. He doesn’t feel the prick of pain in his chest; only sees the tail end of the needle wobbling in stark focus to the rest of his body. His head feels too high up and his feet too far away and the little blue needle trembles with the rise of his ribcage – 

And before he can fully process it, his skull smacks into the tiled floor, ears ringing as his vision rolls away. His fist scorches a mark into the floor before switching off with the last of his consciousness.

 

When Shiro comes to, his limbs feel empty and detached, and a strange weight is settled atop his ribcage. He almost savours the rare taste of numbness, if not for the aggressive lamp beaming a hole into his corneas and the sound of machinery moving around out of his sight. Twisting and turning to wriggle out of the numb, heavy shell of his own body, Shiro tilts his head just enough to see his a masked surgeon fixing his cybernetic arm into a vice. 

Keenly human eyes peer at him from over the edge of the mask. If Shiro could struggle, he would. The alarm bells blaring in his head drone a muffled tune, and Shiro swallows thickly around his own tongue. Sandpaper burns down his throat.

Straining, he moves a single finger, then twitches a knee. But this movement combined is not nearly enough to shake off the thick straps binding him to the operating table, nor the contraption securing his arm. 

Foam padding tightens around the muscle of his right bicep, and so does the vice further down his arm. Shiro watches in slow horror as a hand raises a blade to pry at the near-invisible seam between the plates of his arm. 

_N-No! No, wait –_

His lips twitch in a lifeless prayer and he stares, eyes wide, at the first screech of metal on metal. Pain sparks up his dulled nerve endings as the tool digs into his arm with renewed vigour. 

It barely hurts, as if he’s watching from afar as a child takes apart a toy and tosses aside the uninteresting parts. The blade is soon set aside in favour of a larger wedge-shaped utensil, its sharpened edge enough to lever open the outer plates of his arm and reveal the insides. Shiro grimaces as he gazes at what looks to be solid, semi-organic flesh, all dense purple and filling the cavity of his arm. The surgeon looks equally perplexed, obviously expecting something more akin to hydraulics or hard drives or intricate, man-made wiring. 

But it’s _not_ man-made, Shiro thinks. It’s alien, as alien as the threat currently speeding its way towards Earth. He bucks on the table, intending to rip his arm away. Nothing happens. The surgeon doesn’t look up from his examination of Shiro’s alien flesh.

He swallows a defeated noise. Before his blurry vision, every meticulous movement vanishes into incoherence, and Shiro’s eyelids start to droop in fatigue. Maybe… if he just goes to sleep, everything will fade into imagined spectres and demons. 

He’s tried this before, and never once did he wake to anything resembling home.

Shiro lets his eyes fall closed. Patterns swirl on the underside of his eyelids, and he allows himself a moment to appreciate them for the constellations they resemble, a childhood fancy he still hasn’t grown out of. Of course, he’s seen more than enough constellations by now, and none that resembled the ones on planet Earth. In closing his eyes, he can almost imagine himself out of the operating room and lying in his own bed.

A sudden persistent buzzing starts up, and Shiro jerks alert.

He doesn't see anything out of sorts, initially, until the silver smudge in the surgeon's hands forms itself into the jagged edges of a circular saw, whirring an inch above his arm.

 _Fuck – !_ Shiro shouts, but it doesn't deter the masked figure, the tool in his hand lowering decisively, about to carve a line into the metal edge of his stump. 

_Fuck, stop – stop it!_ Shiro persists, his arm twitching and his face fixed in a painful rictus. Smoothly, the blade snicks into his upper arm, sparks cooled with water and the tough metal parting to reveal purple insides and wire bones. Whatever anaesthetic that had settled deep in his bones flees immediately, and Shiro screams awake at the first vibration up his arm. He can’t pass out from the blood loss this time. Swallowing a whimper, Shiro lies immobile and trembles as the blade cuts through him like butter.

The circular saw disappears within minutes, and his once-arm lays disembodied and alien on a nearby tray. Shiro closes his eyes.

He wants to scream, wants to tear his skin off at how crudely they removed his Galran half. It's not comforting in the least to see his most trustworthy weapon laid out like a dissected specimen, but neither was it to feel metal grafted into skin. It's still there, a chopped-off stump hanging off his right bicep. Shiro wants to dig his fingernails into the sharp edges.

 

…

“…meow.” _Hey._ “Meow!”

_Hey, it’s –_

“K-Kuro?”

Shiro refocuses to an unexpected sight: his hand lying limp on the bathroom tile and bleeding red into the grout, and his little grey tabby cat nosing her face into his own. He startles backwards.

“H-Hey, kitty. I –” Shiro scrambles to sit upright and piece together what had just happened. His hand twinges in pain, and he quickly notices the mirror, streaked with red and shattered into dust.

“F-Fuck, that’s…” It hurts to see his cowardice painted so visibly before him, and Shiro grabs Kuro with his hurting hand and gets up to flee. His feet skid on the tile and he trips comically to land panting on the couch. 

“Fuck, that – that hurts.” Kuro leaps out of his grip and walks away to settle daintily on the cushion beside him, her black stripes warping as she stretches to the ceiling. Shiro hurries to count her stripes (two on one leg, three on the other, and a splotch that could be a single stripe on her backside) as his heart threatens to pound out of his chest. 

Two, three – _one_. Shiro tastes the mantra tried, tested and true on his tongue and reaches out a shaky hand to stroke Kuro’s lovely pelt. She wriggles delightfully in place.

“Th-That’s a good girl, yeah?” She meows peaceably. “Yeah.” Shiro inhales another deep breath, and focuses both eyes on the small flat-screen TV opposite him. It’s nothing special, an old model dating back at least a decade or so, but it’s generous enough of the Garrison to offer him this. 

_‘Offer’_ , he frowns, as though this dressed-up prison miles out in the middle of the desert was a gift. Kuro purrs under his palm, and the frustration drops off of Shiro’s face. 

It’s tiring to stay angry, sometimes.

Kuro meows again, a soft sweet noise in the deafening silence of the desert surrounding him.

“You’ll keep me safe, right kitty?”

“Mrr-ow.” Her tiny head butts into his thigh, and Shiro smiles tiredly. 

“That’s good…” 

She crawls into his lap when he finally relaxes enough to uncross his tensed legs. Despite the crick in his neck, Shiro hangs his head against the top of the couch and closes his eyes. He’s deserved this rest.

As he sleeps, he dreams. 

And in his dreams, he sees a better reality – a brighter, more exciting depiction of real life. Because these occurrences are rare and few, Shiro smiles in his sleep.

 

To say he hears the cat the moment it slips into his front yard is an exaggeration, though he’s out of the door as soon as he sees movement outside. His minimal freedom allows him to leave the house, but a few metres in front of the door stands a tall, impassable gate. High-voltage metal beams powered by sunlight makes the structure powerful enough to fry his skin off. 

If he still had his other arm, he might’ve tried to carve his way through. But now, after months of staring down the imposing structure severing him from reality, Shiro finds little will to escape. 

Unlike his Galra days, escaping to Earth is no longer a possibility. He’s already escaped, and to outright hostility.

As usual, Shiro can’t help but wistfully scan what horizon he can see through the thick bars of the gate before focusing on the movement he’d spotted earlier. He does a double take at what looks like a small, grey cat sitting in the middle of the dust and sand, staring at him with big amber eyes. 

“Y-You’re a cat.” God knows where it came from, but it definitely looks skinny enough to have crawled through the gate without singing even the tips of its whiskers. “A _cat_.”

The first company he’s had in months thankfully doesn’t run off. Twin velvet ears turn in his direction as Shiro carefully squats and stretches out his only hand.

“Hey… come over here?” He beckons with his fingers, and the cat, a rather beautiful grey tabby, simply stares at him. She – Shiro decides on a whim – settles further on the ground, stretching out a pair of legs before turning away to groom her fur. 

Shiro inches closer and the cat turns to stare, curious and haughty at once. Shiro would like to say he has a way with cats, a statement that translates to coddling the household cat and attempting to chase down the neighbourhood apparitions. Of course, not every cat is easily swayed by the promise of pets and cuddles, but this strange desert specimen eagerly sniffs at his outstretched finger before going back to her business.

Sucking in a cautious breath, Shiro reaches out to stroke between her slim shoulder blades, the lighter patches of fur catching the sunlight in a way he’s never seen before. He feels stupidly giddy at this promise of companionship.

The desert howls empty, especially at night. And the geckos that crawl onto the house never lighten up his day in the same way.

Swallowing a hysterical laugh, Shiro rubs the edge of a flickering ear, a tiny head, and a fragile paw, before the cat pulls away. Slowly, he stands back up as an already fully-formed plan emerges in his head. 

Crossing his fingers and hoping she doesn’t run back out into the desert, Shiro makes a beeline for the kitchen. The pantry was desolate to begin with, and the weekly food deliveries have done little to add to the stockpile. Despite this, Shiro grabs a can of tuna without hesitation, dumping the contents onto a plate and all but sprinting to the door to see if the cat is still outside. 

She is. Shiro grins.

At the sound of his footsteps, she looks up, curious. Shiro swears he can see her little body shake with excitement as he lowers the tuna into view and carefully places it on the ground.

“There you go, dig in.”

She takes a single, tentative sniff before planting her face into the soft oily flakes. Shiro carefully squats beside her and, after a moment of appreciating the feverish way in which she’s gobbling up the morsels of fish, reaches out a hand to stroke between her ears.

“Mrr…”

Despite the miserable patch of desert he’s in, Shiro shifts to fully sit on the ground like he’s at a picnic, his only companions the small cat and her plate of food. She mews excitedly with every frantic mouthful. Shiro doesn’t know much about cats, but this one clearly looks starved. This is made more obvious when, a minute later, she licks clean the plate and promptly topples to the ground, yawning and stretching and closing her eyes.

Shiro scratches her flank and she rumbles in pleasure.

Getting to his feet, Shiro considers the furry little outline on the ground. She might be displeased if he carries her inside, but it also seems a little… cruel to leave her out in the desert when there’s nothing but sand and pounding desert sun. 

Carefully, Shiro attempts to nestle the cat into the crook of his only arm without jostling her too much. With a little awkward stooping, he manages to curl the cat against his chest and stand back up. She thoughtfully helps by hooking both sets of claws into his shirt. 

Wincing, Shiro shoots her a fond look. It’s just a few strides back inside, but he pauses anyway, to look at the little beige building, frozen in time and pretending to be part of some distant American suburb. A picturesque little thing, if it weren’t for the massive black fence around it and the barren desert beneath its foundations. The air inside feels barren, too. 

Shiro’s been away from Earth for too long, but the crude attempt at homeliness isn’t enough to fool him. The structure before him radiates emptiness and oppression, and the generic furnishings leave a bitter taste in his mouth. Or maybe it’s just the day to day routine of waking to nothing else around him.

It’s a little like being in space, and a little like… Keith’s old shack.

 

He remembers the first time he visits Keith’s shack like it was yesterday, despite the occasion having been a distant four years in the past. Shiro was younger then, and so was Keith, skinny and unkempt, all sharp elbows and angry tufts of hair. 

Keith stares at him, a little wide-eyed goblin guarding the entrance to what he declares his ‘home’ (it looks more like a shack, in Shiro’s opinion). Shiro stares back.

“So, this is…?”

“My house.” Keith reaches for the wooden doorknob. “I think my dad’s out,” he adds after a pause.

“Oh. Okay.” 

The building in front of them is trapped in its own little time pocket, a worlds away from the Garrison’s technological advancements. Slightly cautious, Shiro follows him in. 

It’s not a Garrison-mandated visit in any way. Shiro had been teaching Keith the finer details of hovercraft operation (a borrowed Garrison craft sits outside) when they strayed a little too far east and Keith pointed to a building in the near distance. 

Shiro blames his own curiosity – he hadn’t known people lived so near the compound. And it’s this same curiosity that leads him to step through the dark doorway and find Keith sipping at a juice box.

“Want one?” Keith gestures.

Shiro shakes his head distractedly, the lime green carton in Keith’s grip the least of his worries. The interior of the house looks… looks even _worse_ than the outside, if that’s possible. He eyes the splintering rafters and wooden floor in suspicion. The ratty curtains look like a health hazard.

“You-You live here?”

Keith sucks loudly on his drink. “Yeah?”

“Right. Okay.” Shiro gives the room they’re in another glance, taking note of the couch, the debris in the corner, and the single doorway in the far wall leading to another room. It’s… liveable, if barely. “So what are we doing here again?”

“Taking a break,” Keith mumbles. “Anyway, I wanna show you this cool star chart I made.”

Tossing his juice box aside, Keith leads Shiro further into the house, to a smaller room where a tiny bed sits opposite… what must be the chart. It’s a massive thing, spanning the entirety of the wall in little plastic pushpins and strips of paper. Even before Keith gestures at the different parts of it, Shiro can see the crude shapes of constellations.

“Cool, right?”

Shiro makes a mental note to return to their lesson as soon as possible. “When did you make this?”

“Before Garrison. It’s not any use now, but I still like it.”

“It’s nice,” Shiro truthfully admits. And it is, all dots of colour decorating the plainly wallpapered wall. Shiro can see where Keith attempted to string notable constellations together with bits of white thread. “Did you look for the stars yourself? Or use reference books?”

“Both. You can see loadsa stars out here.” Keith pauses to restring a sorry set of pins and gives Shiro another glance. For once, his violet eyes are filled with a different sort of excitement, and Shiro can imagine a younger naiveté behind his usual vicious façade.

“That sounds fun.” 

“It is.”

Keith was always just a regular cadet to him, but from then on, the encounters get more and more memorable, until, two and a half years from that day, Shiro asks:

“Do you want to take a look at the Kerberos craft with me?”

Keith nods excitedly. 

The rocket is even more daunting up close, and it shakes Shiro to the core to imagine that he’ll be flying the massive thing in just a few weeks time. Keith looks similarly awed.

“Bring back some space ice for me, okay?”

“I’ll see what I can do. And I’m not leaving just yet!” He’s run over the launch procedures and simulations more than enough times, but the entire scenario still feels like getting into the driver’s seat with less than an hour of experience under his belt. Shiro takes a deep breath.

“Yeah, but when you _do_ …”

“I know, I know. You’re gonna be there to see me off, right?”

Keith grins widely. “‘Course I am.”

They meet next a few days before launch, when Shiro admits that this will be the last time they can see each other in months. Despite usually being more on the reserved side, Keith offers a handshake that turns into an awkward, lingering half-hug.

“Stay safe,” Keith mumbles. 

“Of course. You don’t need to worry.”

“Yeah.” 

Still, they don’t separate until Shiro pats Keith on the back a few more times. Keith stares up at him. 

“See you at launch.”

“See you.”

 

Shiro doesn’t see Keith at launch. He can’t see anyone, save a crowd of countless faces during the short walk into the craft itself. Once in the pilot seat, there’s nothing but silence and the empty air above them. Matt chirps in excitement. 

**[ACTIVATE LAUNCH SEQUENCE]**

“Go-odbye Earth!” Matt hoots, until Commander Holt reprimands him. _Goodbye Earth,_ Shiro repeats in his own head. It’s surreal, to think he’s actually leaving the planet for the edge of the solar system. Taking a deep breath, Shiro runs through the procedures once in his head before reaching for the controls. 

Just like a simulation. Just like a – 

Except he’s going to be gone for the majority of a year. He didn’t even spot Keith or his other friends within the crowd. Gritting his teeth, Shiro attempts to clear his head. Now – is launch. 

The rumble beneath them is a familiar sensation, and Shiro allows himself relax into the ergonomic seat. 

_Goodbye, Earth._ The sky rushes up to meet them.

 

A world away, Shiro sees a similar sight. Similar, if opposite. Green, blue, and beige appear in his vision as his tiny craft speeds towards Earth. He grapples with the alien controls, attempting to slow his descent, and despite the tension building inside him ( _Earth_ – The Garrison? – His friends, career, education, _home…_ ), Shiro breathes in a strange sense of calm. 

He’s just returning home, he tells himself, after the mission to Kerberos, and now his room in the Garrison is waiting for him, and so are the commissary meals, and the tutees he’s missed teaching. After the Galra, his memory is patchy at best, but the Garrison has and will always be central to his life.

 _Welcome home,_ he thinks.

After the craft crash-lands into desert dunes, the events are a blur. Shiro recalls seeing suited, humanoid figures (Garrison operatives, his mind tells him) reaching for him in the pilot seat and strapping him into a stretcher before he can try and regain his balance. Appropriate for the crash victim he is, but the straps are tight enough to bite into his sides and restrict his movement. He thrashes his head around, seeking an answer. 

“What’s happening? Where are you taking me?”

No one spares him a word. 

“Who are you guys? Garrison?” 

Shiro catches one last glimpse of the spacecraft and the desert before he’s bundled into the back of a van and the vehicle zooms away. He tries not to panic, but it’s difficult. Even in his state of nervousness, he’s confident the landing was within several dozen miles of the Garrison complex, so it stands to reason that he’s currently en route to the place he’d called home for so many years. Shiro tries to relax.

If he closes his eyes, he can imagine every grain of sand in the desert they’re passing over, that familiar fixture in Garrison environment. With every passing second, the vibrations from beneath him ever more resemble the thrill of hoverbiking out across the dunes, away from the strict regulations and rules of the Garrison campus. Quietly, Shiro eases into a peaceful state.

 

The desert is vast by any stretch of the imagination, and made vaster so in his fifteen year old body, surrounded by friends all perched on similarly-purring hoverbikes. With the tanks of fuel beneath them the only limitations, it’s easy to see why the trio had rushed off to the nearest rental store once they’d scrounged together enough funds. Shiro yells in excitement, and the sound disappears into the emptiness around them.

To be fair, they’re only a short ride from the store, but in all other directions, there is nothing but desert, more desert, and the occasional sign of life. Shiro is one of them. Why anyone had handed the vehicles over to a group of minors Shiro has no clue, but he wastes no time in zooming off towards the nearest stretch of horizon.

Wind tickles against his skin and ruffles his clothes. With this newfound freedom, Shiro takes the opportunity to depress the accelerator as far as it can go and feel the engine take off. On the craft, he can feel a sort of weightlessness, like he’s hovering way more than a mere metre off the ground. If Shiro were to tilt the handlebars a little, he can imagine drifting up and off into the sky, buoyed by his own excitement and the roaring engine beneath him. 

It feels like his imaginations of space travel.

 

But of course, nice things never last for long, and in the blink of an eye Shiro wakes again, eyelids fluttering in confusion before he finally places himself on a worn couch, a purring Kuro against his side. She meows loudly.

“Hey girl…”

A glimpse at the clock and the darkening sky outside proves that he’s been sitting here, slowly losing his mind for the past few hours. She’s probably hungry, and he needs some sustenance too. A little dismayed at the flood of warm memories quickly leaving him, Shiro forces himself upright and stumbles towards the kitchen.

Kuro hops down onto the ground behind him. 

Shiro yanks open the pantry door with his hurting hand and browses the bare contents. Food deliveries arrive once a week, but there’s barely enough to keep him _and_ a cat alive. Now that he’s two days away from the next drop-off, he’s already run out of canned fish for Kuro. A quick mental sweep of the refrigerator reveals some leftover chicken, and Shiro makes a note to boil some for the cat. The extra meat might give him more energy and make his meal taste nicer, but Shiro’s already come to terms with the fact that he’s imprisoned, probably until he wastes away. Nice meals hardly matter in such a situation. 

And he’d rather not see the cat starve.

He feels a quiet sense of accomplishment at how much Kuro has grown since she first arrived – doubling and soon tripling in size from that ratty little kitten she had once been. As usual, Kuro greets her plate of food with enthusiasm, burying her face into the cooked chicken. Shiro sits beside her in silent appreciation, spooning mouthfuls of rice and vegetables into his mouth with robotic monotony.

It’s a difficult job when pain intermittently shoots up his left hand, one that is only made harder with how little practise he’s had using his non-dominant hand. Still, Shiro doesn’t spill food all over himself like in the first few weeks, something he’s glad for.

His spoon scrapes against the bottom of the bowl before he’s even noticed. Shiro bites down on metal and frowning, notes that Kuro’s plate is similarly empty. _Huh._

“Time for bed, I guess.”

The knuckles on his left fist twinge in pain, but Shiro gives his injury little thought, instead throwing the soiled plates into the sink and rinsing himself off in the shower to faster fall comatose in bed.

“Night, Kuro.”

She gives him the slightest ear twitch and, resigned, Shiro tucks himself into bed. Sometimes she would come join him at the foot of the bed, but apparently not today. Once in bed, sleep is a decent reward after too many hours awake. Shiro stares up at his ceiling and tries not to think.

He’s had more than enough thoughts clogging his mind for the entire day, and night is no different. The ticking of the bedside clock sometimes helps to lull him to sleep, but other times digs sharp needles into his consciousness. Frowning, Shiro turns again, trying to find that ever-elusive sleep.

…It comes eventually, though never soon enough. Shiro dreams of familiar memories.

 

The next day starts like any other: Shiro wakes to slender black paws kneading into his chest and sharp little nails digging pinpricks of pain into his nerves. He wakes with a groan. 

“Oh hey, Kuro.”

Yawning, Shiro pushes the duvet aside and cradles Kuro against his chest. His knuckles seem to have scabbed up, and he gingerly flexes his fingers. Stiff.

Frustratingly, he never wakes up feeling at all well-rested, but the Garrison is generous enough in their weekly deliveries of one very important staple: coffee. While Kuro makes herself comfortable on the tabletop, Shiro juggles with a pot of boiling water and his coffee-stained mug. He nearly reaches out to steady the mug with his right hand when he remembers the empty air beneath his bicep. 

Less than half an hour into his morning, and he already feels defeated. Sighing, Shiro carries his steaming mug of coffee over to the table and gives Kuro a good belly-scratch. She rumbles, easily appeased.

“What do you want to do today, girl? Go out for a walk?” Shiro chuckles to himself as she stretches lazily. Kuro will probably leave through to front gate as she usually does, to explore the desert or whatever there is to do outside. He’s always a little jealous of the way in which she lithely slips through the electrified bars to disappear into the beige distance. But even if he could escape, where would he go?

The Garrison? His childhood home back in Japan, if it even exists anymore?

Shiro rubs tiredly at his eyes and finishes the rest of his coffee.

In a way, he’s been imprisoned ever since the Kerberos mission was announced and he made it his goal to get onto that select team of explorers. At the time, there had been no other possible route for him – he _had_ to get to the top. Had to go where no man has gone before.

But now, Shiro wonders if the hours and hours of rigorous exams and assessments had really been worth it. He could have stayed on Earth, become a training officer or instructor, _enjoyed_ his time more.

Sighing, he sets aside the ‘what ifs’ for another day and refocuses on the present.

Reaching for the provided tablet, Shiro thumbs to the next episode of a nature documentary he’d been following.

Dolphins chase each other around on screen and Shiro feels, just a little bit, better.

From day one he’s had the nagging suspicion that the Garrison were tracking his every online activity, but when he realised the whole house was probably rigged up to the nines in cameras, he lost the will to _care_. Which is why, every week or so, Shiro furiously searches: Garrison Kerberos mission; Takashi Shirogane; Matthew Holt; Samuel Holt; Kerberos. Nothing. Not a clue to show there had ever been a mission, or any missing crew. And every time, Shiro fumes. 

The search engine’s comprehensive enough; he can pull up news articles on countries half a world away, history dating back several thousand years, and all manner of entertainment. But nothing on the Garrison, aside from a bland description of their work. And of course, nothing on the Galra, and nothing on Voltron. Shiro might as well have hallucinated everything in the past few years of his life. 

This hypothesis is only made worse by the fact he has apparently returned to Earth ten entire years after he left. Shiro had nearly keeled over when he first saw the figures, but now… it sort of makes sense. With how fast the Galra ships were travelling, it’s only proper that he’s fucked up Earth time and returned to a planet that has probably already forgotten him. 

With the exception of the Garrison.

Shaking himself, Shiro focuses back on the dolphins. One episode passes, then another, until Shiro looks up from his videos to note that the time’s nearing noon. Kuro licks plaintively at his fingers and he shudders out of his stupor. 

“Right. Food. Sorry we skipped breakfast.”

She mews. He’s the worst owner ever, Shiro muses. It doesn’t help that he forgets his own meals at times, and that Kuro could claw a hole through the door before he hears her scratching and realises what it means.

“Here’s some more chicken, and then you can go outside, okay?”

Licking her chops, Kuro vanishes out the door the moment he pulls it open. 

“…Bye.”

She’ll be back, as always, but he still feels a pang of loneliness. Tablet in hand, Shiro moves to the couch, enjoying the way in which sunlight peers through his barred windows and paints thick stripes on his legs. He’ll… watch another episode, take a nap, and then wake when Kuro returns. Shiro eases into a comfortable position and stares dully at the moving images onscreen.

In a past life, he might’ve combated stress or boredom with exercise, but now it’s easier to lie there and watch the hours pass by. He deserves the rest after that gruelling year in the arena, after all. Shiro lets his eyelids fall shut.

When Shiro wakes, Kuro still isn’t back. He makes sure to open the front door, check the yard, and even peer through the bars of the gate. Nothing. 

Nothing from up above, either, when he reflexively checks for a delivery. Right, Shiro reminds himself, that’s for tomorrow. Every Friday afternoon, a parcel thumps into the ground outside his door, filled with just enough food to last him a week. Kuro always startles at the sound, and so does Shiro, leaping to attention with his heart pounding in his chest before he realises what the cacophony is.

Worried, Shiro peers through the gate again before resigning himself to the fact that Kuro will probably show up a little later. She’s always been a surprisingly obedient cat, smart enough to know there’s a steady supply of food from his hands. There can’t be much to eat in the desert, so it’s a wonder she continues to leave the house every day, like clockwork. And like clockwork, she’ll return just as dinner is ready. Scrubbing a hand through his hair, Shiro turns around and decides to start on dinner, even if it’s still early in the afternoon. 

Gazing into the pantry, he gathers up most of the remaining rice, a slightly sprouty potato, and a dented can of chopped tomatoes. Luckily, Kuro is okay with rice, just as he is with the limited diet. His time with the Galra has taught him to appreciate anything life offers him, even if it's a watery stew of tomato-flavoured potato chunks. 

Still, even if he's got dinner all mapped out, there's really nothing to do for the next few hours, and the solid mass in his stomach tells him his appetite isn't to return for a while. The couch has become his new home, in a way, and Shiro settles heavily onto a seat. The TV blinks awake at him after a second, and with a few croaked commands, some action movie more suited for a late-evening thriller runs on repeat on the screen. 

Thrilling. 

Shiro’s eyes scan lazily over the subtitles, barely grasping the plot and instead focusing on the vivid movements across the screen, a knife; a car; the protagonist and his dressed-up partner-in-crime. Dully, he thinks he might've seen this before in a past life, on a trip to the cinema with his friends, but now the same characters and action scenes spark barely a reaction in him. 

He’d watch more documentaries, but he's already exhausted his daily quota for them. Nothing to do now, but to wait for the next meal to arrive and for bedtime. And then for tomorrow's parcel. Despite the weeks and weeks he's had to get used to this schedule, opening up the box with its generous bounty always leaves him excitable and on-edge. There's nothing better than the feeling of hoarding enough food for more than a meal.

Sometimes, cleaning products also arrive with the food, little reminders that he should probably wash his dishes instead of reusing them the next day. Or that he should clean his clothes, the ones that probably reek of mildew and decay by now. He can't really smell it, though.

Oddly enough, they never include bleach in their little presents. 

‘But what about the dirty bathrooms?’ Shiro asks himself. ‘Don’t you, the Garrison, care about my dirty bathrooms?’

It’s a little funny, he has to admit. Sure, the laundry detergent and the soap may not be palatable, but the last time he tried chugging a bottle, all he got was diarrhoea. 

Yawning, Shiro focuses back on the TV. Nothing really worth watching.

Nowadays, Kuro is the only thing that really manages to catch his attention. He’d named her, jokingly, he thought, as his other half, black where he is white. Turns out, he’d do anything for the little cat, even meticulously picking out the thread from his pillowcase to craft a little string for her to chase. 

Kuro loved it. 

Nervously, Shiro picks up the crude toy from where it's sitting on the table and darts another glance at the front door that he's left ajar. No telltale flicker of grey-white ears.

A second glance at the clock shows it's barely been an hour since he sat down to ‘watch’ TV. Shaking with restlessness, Shiro tries to think of something to do, but when lethargy is gluing him to the couch, there's little he can do but wait to cuddle Kuro. He curls his arms around a cushion in her stead.

 

Finally, after what feels like an eternity of waiting, she returns happy and whole, ears flickering and tail waving as she sees him. Shiro breathes out a loud sigh of relief.

“Welcome home, girl.”

She nuzzles the palm of his hand, pausing for a comfortable second before promptly demanding dinner. Shiro chuckles.

“That’s my kitty. Don’t worry, I saved some food for you.”

He’d eaten his own portion in nervous anxiety, and Kuro’s dish of rice sits cooling on the counter. She doesn’t mind, though, digging in like it’s the finest seafood. 

“Tomorrow’s delivery day, Kuro. Let’s hope they include something nice for you, yeah?”

Her tail flicks in response, and Shiro sits down on the ground beside her. Kuro’s home, and finally, he can rest.

 

The next day jolts properly into action with a loud crash from the front yard, and Shiro leaps out of his seat before the contents of the crate can even settle. Kuro hides under the couch in fright, and Shiro’s thumping heart betrays his own fear of loud noises. Still, the cardboard parcel is a welcome sight. He has dozens others all shoved onto a spare corner of the living room, and he knows if he counts them, he can find out the exact number of weeks he’s been trapped here. But that’s no fun, and Shiro throws the current box onto the pile as soon as he’s unloaded all the food onto the kitchen floor. 

Vegetables, carbohydrates, and more cans. A small bottle of hand soap sits among the pile and Shiro daintily places it beside the sink. Perfect, just like in his past home.

Kuro comes sniffing at the new foodstuffs, and Shiro idly scratches her backside.

“We can have tuna for lunch! And rice with… this tin of peaches, I guess.”

Shiro savours every slice, and Kuro gobbles down her fish in a quarter of the time.

Sometimes, Shiro wonders if the food will just one day stop coming, and he and Kuro will be resigned to mutual starvation. It’s not a happy thought, but he doesn’t have many happy thoughts these days. 

And then one day, the only source of happiness in his life disappears. 

Kuro.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> :)  
> thank u for all the comments + kudos so far <3

It’s not unusual for her to stay out in the evenings, returning just in time for food. Shiro then keeps her inside until the next day. She’s never not returned, and on the verge of tearing his hair out, Shiro darts nervous looks at the entrance every other second, leaving the door wide open to give him a good view of the darkness outside. It chills him to the bone. But he’s got to do this, and pray the light will attract her home. He even leaves a dish of food right by the door.

Of course, with his luck, nothing happens. Not a whisker slips through his door, and he doesn’t catch a wink of sleep that night.

Only when the sun’s rays are fully over the horizon does he feel brave enough to step outside, feeling on the verge of passing out. The bowl of food is untouched, and Shiro idly wonders if Kuro will be okay with half-spoiled fish. Hopefully. 

The desert sand is cool under his socked feet, and he steps tentatively out into the yard. From a distance, Shiro glances at the barred gates, hoping to see a flicker of movement from outside. She wouldn’t abandon him after so long, would she? He hopes not. Shiro takes another step, then another.

In hindsight, it’s a wonder he’d not noticed her immediately. Her grey-white fur is a sharp contrast to the beiges of the desert, even lying still. Shiro spots her after a few halting minutes, and immediately feels bile rising in his throat. 

_No –!_

“No! No no no no no!” Taking a flying sprint, he throws himself towards the stretch of gate facing his house, nearly clutching at the shocked bars before he pulls back in terror. Bile is sour on his tongue and burning in his throat as he heaves without even properly making out the image before him. 

But it’s clear as day when he’s kneeling up close, just inches of gate and sand between him and the shrivelled, immobile body. He sees a small, familiar paw, then a second, then the hind two, and a stiff frozen tail. Horrible burn marks singe the fur off her side, and it isn’t hard to see what had happened.

Shiro vomits, coughing yesterday’s half-eaten dinner to the ground. Whimpering, he retches again, then again, until only spittle clings to his lips. Kuro’s fur flutters with the breeze. 

He tries to reach for her through the bars, but the electrified metal is enough to send him scuttling away, to stare longingly at his cat from a distance. 

“S-Sorry, girl…”

Maybe if he strokes her she’ll awake, but just the thought of touching her charred flesh sends him into convulsive retching. Cowed, he stumbles back into the house and slams the door behind him. 

He’s never going out to the yard ever again.

 

Shiro doesn’t know how long he sleeps for, but when he next wakes, the sky is dark and a grimy layer of sweat has accumulated on his skin. He shoves the blankets aside with an abrupt movement and pauses. 

He doesn’t know what time it is or what day, but he knows enough to figure that Kuro probably needs feeding, or to be let outside. In his mind he can make out her furry little body and hear her soft, demanding mews.

“I know, girl.”

And then in one shattering blow the fantasy crumbles, and Kuro’s death comes sharply back to him, and Shiro loses all semblance of routine. For once, he’s lost.

Lip wobbling, Shiro thinks of his options. Does he sit outside and wait for a new cat to come by? But then he’ll be forced to stare at _her_. Does he… pretend to go about his daily life, as though she were still there? Shiro thinks of canned tuna sitting untouched in his pantry and blinks away miserable tears.

Suddenly, the idea of going out to the kitchen to try and make something for his himself seems entirely unappealing. Lying immobile in his bed feels no better, but it’s _easier_. And so, reluctantly, Shiro goes back to sleep.

His dreams flash violent and unforgiving, and he remembers none of them in the morning.

When the sunlight pierces through the layer of grime crusted on his eyelids, Shiro unwillingly shudders awake and forces himself upright. He feels like he’s slept for a century, and the view in the (shattered) mirror only proves that. His legs feel shaky and unsteady, but Shiro manages to prop his hip against the sink and peer properly at himself in the mirror. One skinny, scarred hand thumbs at bristly facial hair and a year’s worth of eye-bags. Like he’s pulled a week of all-nighters studying for an exam.

Giving his face a quick wash, Shiro chuckles. Back when exams were his only worry… 

Of course, there’s not much to worry about now, anyway.

He used to worry about Kuro’s whereabouts, but no longer. And the Garrison, Voltron, _the Galra…_ Shiro feels his motivation dwindle with every search he makes. He’d given up after the first year, he idly recalls. These last few months have been occupied with mind-numbing boredom and enough sleep to more than make up for the hours he’d lost, studying at the Garrison.

And now, it’s easier not to think. Sometimes, Shiro lets himself wish for a better life in the future, to be reborn as one of those animals he sees frolicking about in documentaries. He feels a little childish every time, but it’s a nice thought.

Sipping at a cup of water, Shiro sinks into his couch and stops thinking.

 

The days get worse over time. Slower, too.

One day, it’ll be early March. And then the next, a few days after that. April is a faraway landmark and Keith’s birthday might as well be an infinity away. (His own birthday passed without much fanfare. After all, he’s had a few years worth of those with nothing to mark the date.) 

Rubbing away the tears that threaten to spill, Shiro adjusts his pants so they won’t slip and walks back to the bedroom. As usual, the bed is soiled and unmade, but he’s gotten used to the state of filth. Reaching needily for the blankets, Shiro collapses onto the mattress.

… _Goodnight._

 

He hits a new low one day when, entirely too worn out to even try and act the part of composed adult, Shiro lies there contemplating and, slowly, unclenches. Urine pools around his thighs and he closes his eyes. 

_It’s nothing compared to how many days he’s gone without showering; he’ll get used to it; the bed’s already disgusting._

But that doesn’t stop the prickling in his eyes. Sniffling, Shiro curls into a tighter ball.

_**He’s** already disgusting._

\-----

Two years from the day Shiro crash-landed to Earth, Keith grips the steering wheel in his car while Pidge beside him stares intently at the GPS.

“Ten miles up ahead, I’m positive.”

“Keep going straight?” His knuckles are white on the foam covering.

“Yeah.”

The next few minutes are tense and silent, until a black, obviously Garrison-wrought gate appears on the horizon. Pidge gasps and Keith fumes silently, forcing down the accelerator as the prison nears.

They’ve seen through the numerous security cameras and know what Shiro looks like and what he’s been doing, but an unsettled nervous feeling continues to roil in Keith’s belly.

Is he… actually alright? Alive? Whole? Sane?

Pidge momentarily switches to the camera feed, and a quick glance reveals Shiro lying immobile on his bed as usual. He’s not dead, they’ve seen movement, but it’s still worrying. Keith urges the battered little truck to go faster and soon they’re pulling to a stop before the remote prison.

“Don’t worry, I’ve got this,” Pidge assures, even though they both know she’s in charge of looping the camera feeds while they sneak in, retrieve Shiro, and sneak back out. She’s already practised this one too many times, and it doesn’t take long before they’re stepping out of the car, unlocking the gate, and easing it open. 

“Watch that skeleton,” she cautions, and Keith stares at the ground to see a bleached-white mess of bones. 

“Doesn’t look human,” he replies.

“Thankfully.”

Conversation is limited at this point; they’ve known each other for the past twelve years, ever since Kerberos went bad and no one but them wanted to know the truth. In mutual assurance, Pidge takes the lead while Keith follows behind her.

The door unlocks with a swift movement and then they’re in, stepping foot into rooms they’ve seen only through the screen. It’s taken the past weeks to coordinate a break-in, ever since Pidge finally cracked the most recent Garrison data, as she has been doing for the past decade. In all honesty, it’s taken them too long to get to Shiro. But Keith’s not going to complain, not when he’s helpless without Pidge’s skills.

Once inside, the house reeks of stale air, and Keith feels his eyebrows raising as he spots the piles of dirty dishes littering the kitchen counter. Past Shiro would never leave his living spaces in such a state. A pile of cardboard decorates a large area of the living room, and disorder spreads across the whole house. 

Pidge wrinkles her nose and keeps one eye on her handheld device. 

“There, towards the bedroom,” she whispers.

The bedroom is evidently where Shiro is, and even though Keith is excited to see him after so long, he can’t help but wince at the growing scent of untreated sewage leaking from the doorway. Eventually, his footsteps take him close enough to see a wrinkled pile of blankets and a greasy, black-and-white head of hair poking out from one end. 

“Shiro?” Keith whispers in an almost-reverent tone. The figure doesn’t stir, and he tries again, louder.

Shiro tosses in his bed.

Up close, he looks horrible, like he’s aged double of the twelve years he’d left for. Keith reaches out to brush a matted clump of hair out of his face and sees sunken eyes, protruding cheekbones, and an unhealthy sallow texture to his skin. 

“Shiro? _Oh god_ , what have they done to you…” 

He hears Pidge make a choked noise of surprise beside him.

“Shiro!” He tries again, even louder, voice breaking on the syllables. “Shiro, wake up!” He’s scared to shake him, he looks so fragile. Shiro’s eyelids flutter again before he finally cracks his eyes open, looking too dazed to properly make out their two faces.

His voice creaks when he finally makes a sound. “K-Keith? Katie?”

“Yeah, yeah, it’s me.” Keith nods firmly, and Pidge doesn’t even correct him, nodding in her own solemn silence.

“You… You guys look so different,” Shiro continues, voice wavering as he stares between the two of them. 

“It’s been twelve years.” 

Shiro makes a weak noise. “O-Oh. Thanks for visiting... I, I gotta show you Kuro sometime you shoulda come earlier, she was such a nice…” He breaks into a sudden sob and Keith stares in horror, suddenly unsure of what to do.

Takashi never cried. Takashi never looked like he went six years without food, or smelt like a corpse, or lived in a hovel. But it’s _him_ , Keith assures himself, definitely him, he can see it in the eyes. 

Except that he can’t. Shiro’s eyes look bloodshot like they’ve never done before.

“C’mon, Shiro, we need to get you out of here.”

“What?’

“Out!” Keith tugs aside the blankets, and Shiro looks chagrined. “Out of here! You’ve been stuck here for so long but we’ve finally found you. C’mon Shiro, get up, _please_.”

But Shiro doesn’t get up. He just lies there shivering, clad in soiled pyjamas with every bone visible through the thin fabric. “W-What? _Out?_ ”

Keith’s heart breaks at the sight. Gently, he reaches for Shiro’s nearest arm. “Get up now, we’re leaving.”

It takes an effort on both of their parts to ease Shiro into a sitting position and finally upright. He wraps an arm around Keith’s waist and leans heavily on his shoulder. But heavy only in the most figurative sense. He feels light enough to float away, and Keith barely staggers like he once would’ve under Shiro’s weight. Of course, he’s also grown taller and stronger in the past years, but not enough to bench the Takashi of the past. The current one, however…

Shaking himself, Keith adjusts his grip on Shiro, gives Pidge a determined look, and walks them back out. 

 

The journey home is made in silence, neither Pidge nor Keith finding the ability to start a conversation. Between them, Shiro lulls into semi-consciousness, and Keith eases the grip on his waist. Propped against the car seat, Shiro looks no better than he did in bed. The daylight highlights depths to his face that should never be visible and Keith pains to see him looking like death warmed up. But anything’s better than imprisonment, even Keith’s little house on the other side of the desert. 

He’d moved into the place a few years after Kerberos, and it’s served him well enough, and hopefully Shiro will grow to like it. _He_ had to, after his homeless years post-Garrison. He’d like to think that now, in his early thirties, he has grown out of the teenage paranoia and theorising that filled him a decade ago, but his loathing of the Galaxy Garrison has only gotten stronger. A small sum of monetary compensation wasn’t enough to mend the Holt family. And he’d gotten nothing, save a talking-to and sudden expulsion.

Of course, the past twelve years have instilled a begrudging maturity in Keith, and he’s tried to move on in life, finding new passion, obsessions, _other halves_. But it’s hard to let Shiro go, just as Pidge has never given up the search, coupling technological skill with her own rage to tear through the Garrison archives and leech from them every scrap of information. 

…It’s still taken them two years to decode the location of Shiro’s arrival and subsequent imprisonment. Keith fights the urge to grind his molars.

He stares dully at the back of Pidge’s head and her cropped-short hair, and supposes he’s… lucky, in a way. Neither of the Holts have been found. Shiro is very much warm and still alive beside him, and given enough rest and recuperation, should physically heal.

It’ll be like Takashi had never left. Keith bites down a smile at his blatantly naïve thought and tries not to imagine everything Shiro must’ve gone through to end up sporting a crude stump at the end of one skinny arm and visible scarring all over his skin.

Even if the idea of undressing him to reveal marred skin sickens Keith, he knows he’s going to be the one to scrub Shiro clean, pick every speck of dirt out of his hair, and remove the scruff on his face. He looks fifty and dead in his current state, even though Keith knows he has to be no more than 37. Unless… the space travel did weird things to his body. 

He brushes a hand over matted bangs and hopes the Shiro the universe has returned to them is the same one who’d left.

_Please tell us what happened, Takashi._

Shiro stirs before settling again. 

 

Reluctantly, Keith forces him awake when they arrive, Pidge pulling to a gentle stop outside the house and hopping out to open the car door for him and Shiro. 

“Thanks.”

“Don’t mention it.”

From there, Keith manoeuvres a groggy Shiro towards the bathroom, setting him in the bathtub before fetching soap and some towels.

“Pidge, can you get some food for us?” Keith calls. 

She barks an affirmative and soon disappears, leaving Keith to face his old friend and enough soap, warm water, and clean towels to wash an army. He turns on the tap, and the first trickle of water startles Shiro. 

“Hey, Shiro, do you want to remove your clothes for me?”

Shiro doesn’t look strong enough to anything but groan something that sounds suspiciously like Keith’s name, and he nods, reaching for the ratty bits of fabric that barely resemble clothing.

“Arms up, yeah?” He tries, as gently as he can. Shiro obliges, slowly.

The shirt seems reluctant to come unstuck from his skin, but it does so eventually, coming apart at the seams. Keith throws the stinking cloth into a corner and vows to take out the trash as soon as he can. 

Shirtless, Shiro looks even worse than before, and Keith tries not to stare at the scarred skin stretched like aged leather over the lines of his ribs. Whatever embarrassment he might’ve felt in the past from this situation quickly turns to pity, and Keith barely wants to ask Shiro to move so that they can remove his pants, in case the skin and bones that he is topples into a disordered pile.

“I’m going to take your pants off now, okay?”

Shiro blinks tiredly at him, and Keith reaches for the creased waistband, ignoring the stains and the stench as they peel every inch off Shiro’s skin. He looks pitifully cold now, without the clothes, but the warm water soon fills up the tub.

“Relax,” Keith tries, and Shiro relaxes a fraction, slipping further into the water as a languorous sigh eases from his lips. “Nice, right?” He grabs a washcloth and starts gently rubbing at soiled skin. “Like the… spa in the Garrison swimming pool. D’you remember that?” Keith looks to Shiro’s face and finds his eyes fully closed, mouth tightened into the closest thing to a smile they’ve seen so far. 

_Good._

He lathers up the (already dirty) towel with soap and works the liquid into suds. “What about when you were trying to teach me to dive? I was in my mid-teens back then. You always got so disappointed whenever I belly-flopped.” Now that he’s started, the memories he’d tried so hard to bury (they always tasted bittersweet in hindsight) return in full force. He hopes Shiro likes hearing his voice; isn’t feeling bone-tired and overwhelmed. 

There’ll be time for rest after a wash and a meal.

Slowly, Keith works his way from face to arms to torso, then the skinny lines of his legs and in-between his toes. The water soon grows cold and opaque with dirt, but Keith just lets it drain away and runs a new bath with no thought to the water bill. Shiro’s wellbeing is worth every cent.

Once Shiro’s skin is baby-pink and smooth, Keith moves onto the nest of his hair. Years worth of growth is evident in every long strand, and he should probably trim off most of the mess before washing. Startled by his own under-preparation, Keith mentally hunts down the scissors before giving Shiro a gentle pat on the shoulder.

“I’ll be back.” And then he runs out, trailing water over the floor and to his bedroom.

Shiro is still in the same position when he returns, at relative peace in the warm water. 

“Shiro, can you… shift over a little? I need to trim your hair.” 

“Mm…” Shiro slurs, and Keith takes the cue to carefully reposition his head nearer the edge of the tub. It doesn’t take much to move him now.

Keith’s not a hairstylist, but he knows enough to cut off the longest, most matted parts of Shiro’s hair. He can trim it down later, but for now the priority is to get it to a manageable length and clean the worst out of Shiro’s scalp.

The snick of scissors seems to awaken something in Shiro, and Keith slows his already careful movements to avoid injuring him. 

“Shiro? Are you okay?”

The mist seems to clear out of his eyes, and he turns to stare at Keith. “K-Keith? Help I – I don’t want to die.”

“You’re not going to die,” Keith blurts in concern. He tries again, calmer. “Shiro, I’m not letting anything happen to you.”

The panic doesn’t fade from Shiro’s eyes, but he lets Keith go back to trimming away the mess, flinching slightly with every cut. When they’re finally done, Shiro relaxes once again, the motion of fingertips rubbing shampoo into his scalp lulling him into sleep.

“Do you feel better?” He looks better, smells better already, no longer reeking of effluent and clad in a dozen layers of his own grime. Shiro nods drowsily and Keith makes sure to rub conditioner into every last strand.

By the time they’re both towelled off and dressed in new clothes, Pidge is ladling soup into bowls and setting beside them what looks to be Hunk’s famous garlic bread. Keith nearly swoons at the smell. And on closer inspection, the soup looks like Hunk’s, too. 

“You ever gonna learn to cook?” Keith nags, and Pidge ignores him with a loud crunch of toasted bread. The smarter tactic, it appears, because no one is in favour of conversation when there’s food to be had. 

Shiro, once half-asleep now looks a little more alive and Keith sits him down at the table. Shiro settles heavily into his own chair.

“Do you want me to… feed you?”

Shiro mumbles a garbled affirmative and Keith immediately reaches for a spoon, ignoring his own meal in favour of raising each spoonful to Shiro’s lips until his spine no longer protrudes grotesquely from beneath his skin.

Of course, one meal isn’t enough to fatten him up that much, but Keith can hope that with enough time, Shiro will finally return to them physically whole. Shiro licks slowly at the spoon, so much so that Pidge is already done and rinsing off her dishes by the time they’re a quarter of the way through.

Keith gives her a silent nod and she disappears from the room. She doesn’t know how to deal with this new Takashi, he knows, and he’s not one to judge. It’s hard to resist the idea of closing his eyes and waking to a better reality, one where Shiro returns his same ol’ twenty-five year old self and Keith can leap into his arms feeling nineteen again. 

…It’s hard not hating the past decade.

He sets the spoon back down, into a mostly-empty soup bowl, and gives Shiro’s mouth a quick wipe.

“Do you want some water?” Regardless of the answer, he’s already reaching for the tap and setting a tall glass of water in front of him before he can attempt a response.

Shiro dribbles some water down the front of his clean clothes, but it’s better than nothing, and Keith leads him to bed the moment he’s done and tells him to rest. It’s then that he finally returns to his own seat at the dining table and scarfs down the cooling soup and bread, ignoring the thick tears that drip down the arch of his nose.

He sniffs once, twice, feeling saline pool in the back of his mouth even as he swallows mouthful after mouthful of creamy soup. Pidge pokes her head back in once he’s nearly done and sits back down, wordlessly handing him a tissue.

“Thanks.”

“No problem. How is he?” She asks in a serious tone, darting a look in the direction of Keith’s bedroom and where they both know Shiro is slumbering.

“Recovering.” Keith manages. He licks the last crumbs off his finger. “Hopefully.”

“He looks,” Pidge starts, with all the tact Keith knows her for, “D –”

_Dead? Disgusting? Downright miserable?_

“-Different.” 

Keith nearly barks out a laugh. “No shit he does!”

“Wonder what happened to him…” Pidge continues, ignoring Keith’s exclamation.

“Got probed by aliens? Fucked up by the Garrison? Who fucking _knows_.” Keith snarls, all teeth and nails and post-Kerberos anger.

“I hope he remembers what happened,” Pidge continues, and trails off before she can say something potentially insensitive like _’Why don’t we treat Shiro like an experiment and find out all he knows about the aliens? Are you curious? Because_ I _sure am!’_

Keith lets out a quiet exhale. “I just hope he gets well enough to look a little more alive than he does now.”

Pidge only nods.

 

There isn’t an instantaneous change, unfortunately, but after sleeping a good twenty hours, Shiro wakes without Keith’s prompting. Not to say Keith didn’t hover anxiously at his bedside for a majority of those hours, waiting for him to wake. As soon as he tries to relax in the lounge and sit down for more than an hour, Shiro appears in the doorway, looking dazed and half-asleep. 

Keith is fetching a mug of warm water and more soup before Shiro can even croak out a greeting. And he does, albeit a little quietly.

“H-Hey.”

Keith presses the mug to his hands. “Shiro! Here, drink this first.”

“Yeah.” Shiro’s face creases into an appreciative smile, and for the first time in as many days, Keith’s starting to see hints of his old… lover? Boyfriend? 

He hurriedly shakes himself out of his reverie to steady the grip Shiro has on the mug. The ping from the microwave jolts him into the present.

“Here, you should – eat.” 

Shiro does as he says, with some assistance, and then they’re finally, _finally_ , ready to get to the root of it all, but first:

“I-It’s good to have you back, Shiro.” Keith’s voice breaks on an earnest note.

“It’s… good to be back.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ;)

**Author's Note:**

> kudos + comments keep me goin  
> please ................................................
> 
> (next chapter will be up in a few days - a week)
> 
> timboblr: swummeng-geys


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